I've Tried That - We lose money so you don't have to!

Three months ago, I published a post asking readers for your ideas. Inviting you to join us in a joint business venture.

We had a pretty good response. About a dozen of you wrote me with your ideas. Several of them were really good, and I wish we could have pursued more of them. (And, Donna? The “What to Do If You’ve Been Abducted by Aliens” idea? I wanted to do that one. No, really: I did. But Steve has veto power. He said, “If they’ve been abducted, how will they buy the ebook? Do UFOs have Wifi?”)

We chose the one we felt had the best potential after considering a bunch of factors, such as number of relevant searches, what the competition looks like, could we work with the person submitting the idea, and so on.

Now You Can See the Results

The project we chose was targeted to a niche audience: Florida homeowners. It turns out they have outrageous homeowners insurance rates there. Something to do with the gators. Or was it the hurricanes? I forget.

Our product, produced in partnership with John, a Florida insurance agent, tells Florida homeowners how to lower their premiums. If you’d like to see what this joint business venture looks like, check out Cut My Florida Rates.

Joe, I’m Not a Florida Homeowner

Which brings me to the point of this post. I know our insurance document won’t help most of you. Most of you are not Florida homeowners. (But if you are, and want to save money on your premium, definitely take a look.)

I’m writing about this because I think it’s a pretty cool example of how an idea moves from neurons and synapses to the real world, and hopefully, to real money. (It’s barely live, so I’ll have to tell you about the success in a future post.)

We put out a call for ideas. Out of the dozen or so responses, we chose one that was a good fit. We conducted market research. Our partner wrote the document using his own expertise. We helped with the editing and layout. We wrote the sales copy and built the page. We’re sharing the responsibility for promotion as well as advertising costs and profits.

Are We Geniuses?

John might be, but Steve and I are pretty much middle-of-the-road in the brains department. We don’t have special gifts, high IQs, insider secrets, or friends in high places.

What we do have is knowledge—knowledge that we gained from good training and experience. For me, these three sources have been key:

• You Can Work in Your PJs: This book taught me that I don’t have to wait for an employer to hire me. I can go out and find a need, fill it, and get paid. And it gave me lots of ideas on how to do that.
• Niche Blitzkrieg: This training program taught me about how to find and sell to a niche market and how to tell if the niche is profitable.
• Wealthy Affiliate: I used the WA keyword tool to research our niche. There are about a gazillion searches for our keywords per month. I am also using its article marketing strategies to do some early advertising.

You have ideas, right? If we can turn ours into money, so can you. Go out there and make your own waves.